Salem-Keizer School District leaders are considering stricter measures to ban cell phones during class as some schools plan to tighten enforcement of a no-cell phone policy in the upcoming school year.

Sprague High School is the latest school to enact a school-wide policy banning cell phones and earbuds during class, Principal Chad Barkes announced in a summer message to families.

In the summer of 2022, district leaders issued a policy prohibiting all middle and high school students from using their phones during class. The policy was issued to set clear expectations for the return to in-person instruction after the pandemic.

“We want students to be really engaged,” says Larry Ramirez, the district’s high school principal.

According to this policy, students are allowed to use their phones during recess, lunch break, and before and after school. During class, parents who urgently need to reach their children should call the school office.

Now the district is asking vendors for suggestions for technologies or products that could turn off the phones during the day without schools having to collect and redistribute the phones individually.

That could include lockable cell phone pouches, which have quickly caught on in schools across the U.S. District spokesman Aaron Harada said the district has no specific plans to move forward with any technology, nor any idea which grades or schools it might start with.

The goal of soliciting proposals is to “see what is available, what is possible and what the costs might be,” he said.

Before the pandemic, individual teachers could set policies in their own classrooms. The unified district approach in 2022 came after educators asked for help setting a clear standard as children who were used to having unrestricted access to phones during online classes returned to the classroom, said Tyler Scialo-Lakeberg, president of the Salem-Keizer Education Association.

Before holding a union leadership position, Scialo-Lakeberg taught at North Salem High School. She said phones have been a distraction in the classroom since they became common. But when she began teaching as a substitute teacher after the pandemic, the distraction had gotten significantly worse. Students were openly watching YouTube videos in class without headphones, she said.

“We need to go cold turkey in our schools because they are disrupting operations,” she said.

Cell phone bans have become a major education policy issue in the last year, and several states have passed laws to restrict cell phone use. Governor Tina Kotek said earlier this year she supports a statewide rule on cell phones in the classroom. A bipartisan group of lawmakers is working on a bill for the 2025 session.

In addition to the fact that cell phones are a distraction in the classroom, educators have cited cyberbullying, student mental health, and students filming fights as reasons to limit cell phone use during the school day.

Despite the district-wide guidelines, Salem schools had varying needs and expectations from school to school, according to educators and students.

“We have to keep reaffirming this expectation,” Ramirez said.

West Salem High School implemented a strict cellphone ban last school year, said principal Carlos Ruiz. He said the rules were not consistent across grades, leading to arguments in which students tried to convince teachers to allow cellphones in one class because another teacher allowed them.

“We wanted consistency to minimize distractions,” he said. Despite concerns about the policy, after it was implemented, students told him it wasn’t as bad as they feared.

West’s policy is strict, requiring students to exchange their phone for a restroom pass “to ensure that students do not leave class for extended periods of time and use their cell phones in the restroom.”

Ruiz said the school still allows teachers to allow cell phones in class for educational purposes, and individual students who need cell phones for disability reasons can use them. However, the need for cell phones in class has decreased because the district purchased Chromebooks for every student during the pandemic.

Barkes said his announcement for Sprague means the school will begin enforcing district policy. He said the decision came after feedback from teachers, a student advisory council and other district high schools.

“We had posted this as an expectation; however, our enforcement of the policy was not as strict as stated in the policy,” Barkes said in an email.

Sofia Castellanos, student counselor for the Salem-Keizer School Board, said she understands the reasons for strict cellphone bans. However, she said she would prefer if teachers required students to focus on schoolwork whether they were using cellphones or not.

Castellanos will be a senior at South Salem High School and is enrolled in the school’s International Baccalaureate program, a rigorous college-level coursework program. She said teachers in the program have generally allowed students to use phones and headphones in class to conduct research or listen to music or white noise while working.

A productivity-focused approach “makes students feel like they are being listened to and that they have choices.”

She often listens to background noise on Spotify so that she isn’t distracted by classroom noises, such as people coughing or shuffling their feet, while she studies.

“It’s just easier to concentrate when you have more control over your environment,” she said.

Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: (email protected) or 503-575-1241.

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Rachel Alexander is the editor-in-chief of the Salem Reporter. She joined the Salem Reporter at its founding in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits, and a little bit of everything else. She has been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she is a skater and board member of Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby, and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.